Halcyon Days
by Serymn
Summary: Thirteen is a magical, hopeful age. It's when kids are not quite grown up, yet not quite children anymore all the same. The three of them died at thirteen. Rin's was the only literal death.


AN: The last story, Songs for my Funeral, was my version of Rin's capture to her death. It is sad (with possession, cannibalism, tragedy, and tears). Anyway, this is loosely related. Short, light, & rushed but still kind of sad.

* * *

Kakashi woke up in the hospital bed and sat up quickly. "Rin, where's Rin?" he asked whoever was present, voice frantic. He tried to get off the bed to stand, but winced in pain from his bandaged leg and was forced to lie down on it again.

An explosion had derailed the village before this. Kakashi was delirious from a mission and just arrived, and shocked from the sounds he suddenly ran through the exploding buildings to get to Rin. He woke up in a hospital bed again – this has happened a lot. He disliked waking up from unconsciousness, he never got used to it.

"Hey, I'm here," said Rin, who was sitting on the empty bed next to his.

"What happened?"

"You got knocked out from the running along the falling walls, when you tried to reach me. They were stopped before they could do further damage, and no one was killed."

"Are you fine?"

"I'm the one supposed to ask you that. I'm okay, but you're not. Kakashi, can you promise me something? Please don't put yourself in danger for my sake. I know, we had a promise to Obito and all, but I can watch out for myself. He would laugh, that I'm doing a better job of protecting _you_, hell, it was me who dragged you out."

"Huh? Yes. I will. Sorry for that."

"You don't have any problems with the eye?"

"I had used it, actually. I copied an enemy's jutsu from the last mission, a water-release technique. Though, it drains chakra quickly," he said, touching the scar over the closed eyelid of his left eye.

"The eye surgeons said it was remarkable, that it didn't have any negative reaction. Successful transplants of the Sharingan to non-Uchiha are so rare."

"Yeah, Obito is with me, always," Kakashi said, and smiled under the mask. Rin smiled back.

* * *

Kakashi has fast risen through the ranks of the ANBU, and now known by the epithet 'Copy Ninja' for his rumoured copied techniques using the sharingan. Even the Uchiha admire him. Rin became known as a remarkable medic for one her age, and now in-charge of risky operations, specializing in eye surgery. They wouldn't be that accomplished if not for all that happened with Obito. When anyone compliments them, they credit Obito.

They were both seen as exceptional, valuable shinobi. They don't work as a team anymore, but always stayed together when they got the chance. Others have begun thinking they were a couple, smiling when they walked by, whispering when their back was turned. They are seen eating together, walking home together, going to the graveyard together – 'dating in front of the memorial stone', the passers-by remarked.

If they had looked and listened closer to what Rin and Kakashi talks about, they would hear both of them talking to a missing person. They pause as if to allow someone else to answer, they laugh from an unheard joke, each speak as if the other wasn't the only audience. It would sound demented, but the few villagers who has overheard them understand the ever-turning cycle of grief. It was expected in their line of work. A normal, logical person can be driven to a kind of temporary insanity when grieving, to magical thinking and delusions. They were only thirteen, their teammate is dead. There was love and friendship realized too late. The phase would eventually pass. (Yet it was still disturbing, how they look so normal except for a third person no one can see except for them.)

* * *

Kakashi, with his uniform still splattered with drying blood, rushed through the village to reach the bookstore before closing time. A mission he was given a week to finish he accomplished in a day, as today was the release date of the new _Icha Icha _novel. The bookstore cashier was about to close shop, emptying the money from the cash register, when he looked up and saw Kakashi. The young man grinned and took three copies of the book packaged just for him. Kakashi was his best customer, after all, and already paid for them last week. Kakashi thanked him and the cashier only nodded back.

Kakashi, excited to read, didn't wait until he got home. He sat on the bench under the streetlight, tore the plastic package, and began reading. For him, reading was like time travel. Open a page to another dimension, and before he knows it he'd be so engrossed for hours, unaware of time or people passing.

Halfway through the book, all the streetlights turned off. Electricity was out. It was so dark that he thought he was inside a cavern than outside in the street. Kakashi groaned, as he was distracted from the detailed fight scene where the hero finally faces the man he was to kill for revenge. He was reading and he'd have to restart the chapter. He took his keychain with a small flashlight, switched it on and continued. He read again, and reread several scenes a few chapters back. Time stood still as he turned pages. Then, a strong light flashed on his face. He recoiled in shock and dropped the book.

"Hey, my eyes are sensitive!" he said, and saw that it was only Rin, shining the light of a big flashlight under her chin. It made her look like a scary disembodied head in the dark. She picked up the book from the ground and gave it to him.

"Sorry. I was about to go home," she said, and sat beside him. It was usual between them, this silence. Kakashi reading, and Rin just sitting. Sometimes, Kakashi gets in rare story-telling moods complete with dramatic dialogue and him re-enacting fight scenes from the book. Only Rin knew about his secret acting talent, when someone happens to pass by when he does this, he just quickly sits as if he was reading all along. Rin has asked to borrow the book, it sounded so good with Kakashi's acting, but Kakashi blushed under the mask and wouldn't let her. He recommended instead those lighter adventure and fantasy novels...

"Look, Kakashi. The stars are so bright tonight with no electricity," Rin said, and Kakashi looked up. Indeed, the sky was pretty. What was once pinpricks of light during normal nights with the lights on, now looked like luminous circles of different colors other than white. He can see blue cloud-wisps of distant nebulas, clearer without artificial light to dim their glow. It had been dark for hours he was reading and he never noticed until Rin arrived and told him. It was like a wholly different sky, he had never imagined it would look like this.

Rin liked looking at the stars. She was the one who taught Obito about constellations during their overnight missions. However, no matter how much she pointed at the stars one by one to Kakashi, the shape would get lost and Kakashi never saw their patterns. Rin said he had no depth perception, dyslexia when it comes to constellations. Even now that he usually uses only one eye, he thinks he'll never see them now at all.

"It's September. That's Cygnus, over there, the outstretched swan with eleven stars. It's easy to spot... the five brightest stars form a cross. Can you see it?" Rin leaned near him and pointed to the sky, tracing the pattern with her fingers.

"I can't see it, Rin. I see... a hidden Mickey. I can see Gai's teeth." Rin looked at him funny. Kakashi squinted but he still couldn't find the pattern.

"Use Obito's eye. He was good at spotting them," she said. Kakashi hesitated at first, that using it would be a frivolous waste of chakra. But then, this is Rin, and he does as she says and removed the forehead protector covering his eye. When he saw the sky using the sharingan, his eyes went wide, amazed. Not only the stars, but the sky was crowding with too much sunlight that there was no darkness. If he had looked any longer, it would look brighter than day and he's afraid it could be blinding.

"Can you see them now?" Rin asked, and smiled expectant that Kakashi now sees it.

"No, this time I see too _much_." He said, and covered his eye again. The sky now looked normal, but the memory of such light seared through his mind. It was like trying to look straight at the sun during daytime. But he can always have that permanent memory to carry... he may not have seen the swan made up of stars, but he'll always have that picture of how the sky looked like, of how Rin smiled.

Rin gave up. It would be better if Kakashi made up his own shapes.

"Is space dark?" Kakashi asked.

"Why? It must be..."

"I thought it might be white. You know, the way sun shines during the day. I imagine space is all light with all those stars..."

"I don't know. Maybe we need to go to space to be sure."

"I read that there are more stars than all the sand of the world combined. That's what the character in the book said."

"The universe is so, so large when you think of it. It's almost like we're nothing, right? When stars are nothing more than sand, then what are we? Germs have small germs, and small germs have smaller germs, and..."

"What are you getting at?" Kakashi interrupted her musing.

"That we can do whatever we want! We don't matter. The world goes on and on... we are so small," said Rin, who looked quite sleepy now, her eyelids halfway closed. She was talking in a drowse.

"Shall we go home?" Kakashi asked, but Rin's soft cheek rested on his shoulder, her breathing deep. She was already asleep. Then, the lights went on, but she wasn't disturbed. All of a sudden, the sky looked bland and featureless again when seen by the brightness of the fluorescent streetlamp. Kakashi wonders why fake light diminished all the true, burning light of faraway suns. Sitting here silent, with only a book in hand and with Rin beside him, he thinks that there's no other place he wants to be other than here. Maybe it's true, what she said, we don't matter. Kakashi opened the book and continued reading.

(They never knew then how wrong they were, that the two of them will be players in an event that would change the world. Their fate, Rin's fate... will trigger something they wouldn't expect. Something that Kakashi wouldn't expect.)

* * *

Somewhere, a boy with a single eye is staring at the walls of a cave, dreaming of seeing the stars again. He misses the view of night outside. Will the sky look any different, now that his sharingan has activated? He imagines that it must look prettier and brighter. Stars, and Rin. He can never think of one without the other. He still remembers the first constellation she helped him spot... Cygnus, the swan, or the northern cross.

He has been inside so long that his hair has grown past his shoulders, the only sign of time passing. Everyday had been the same – training, sparring, or talking nonsense with white artificial men who act as his guardians. The other old man, sitting and asleep, seemed to have never woken since he introduced himself.

"He's always sleeping. My guess is he's inside a dream, in his own world. Literally! I imagine this all might be boring for him," said a white man with a spiral pattern for a face.

"It's better outside. Oh, all the things people do! All the fights to see! But we're asked to guard him until he wakes up," said another white man with half a human face, his eyes yellow and his hair a dull green.

"Do you think he'll let us in? Let us see his dream world?" Spiral man asked.

"What a shitty way to live," Obito interrupted, sitting on his wide bed. "It _is_ better outside than any world made of genjutsu. I swear if I get strong enough I'll surely get out of here."

"Yeah, you keep on saying that every day, yet you're still here! You were entertaining, but now you're just saying the same old things. Even when you sleep, still that Rin and Kakashi. But now you're talking to them as if they were there right beside you," the man with half a face said.

"No longer repeating names like a chime. Talking, and have you heard what he said this morning before he woke up?" Spiral man said, and they both laughed together over that stupid thing Obito said. Obito can't recall what it was.

Still, he is full of hope and never doubted that he could be with Rin and Kakashi again. He dreams of talking to them, both of them smiling at him. He imagines their reunion, soon... Kakashi and Rin crying and laughing at the same time, him joking that they had been so dramatic when they thought he had died. Obito will say, _Of course I'm alive! I'm still gonna be Hokage, remember?_ They'll do a big group hug with Minato-sensei and they would celebrate his return with lots of ramen at Ichiraku's. He is alone, but the possibility of failing is the last thing on his mind. He smiles in his sleep.

* * *

A reunion did happen. They all died, then.

When Kakashi returned to Konoha from his latest mission, he was told _Rin is gone_. They didn't need to tell him what to do. They trusted him.

Rin died the day she realized she did not have the strength or will to control the Sanbi, days of dread and strength drained in her capture. Her fate pretty much decided, she chose to die by Kakashi's hand than let it turn worse, that in a sudden transformation she might forget herself and turn against Kakashi instead. Once the raikiri flashed, she forced herself to_ leap_.

Kakashi died when he woke up again in their village, not knowing where he'd been and shouting like a mad boy for Rin. Rin wasn't there to smile for him. For days he was detained, his blood-curdling screams heard throughout the hospital that they had to sound-proof his room. The medics had thought his madness would get worse to a permanent insanity, but a week passed and he was back to normal again. Though, it took many counselling sessions and depression medications before he could go back on the job. Such a toll for someone so young, but back on the job, he was their best fighter. It was rare to find someone with both talent and level-mindedness.

Obito died the moment he saw Rin's death, and after that was his first massacre of the many genocides he will commit.

He went back to Madara, and it felt like an entirely a different boy has returned. He was blood-drenched, his usual smiling and hopeful face now stern. The artificial men stand by like proud uncles, still talking about how _that was the prettiest massacre we've ever seen._After so many years, the old man smiled for the first time. Madara isn't surprised. "From now on, you are the savior of this world," Madara had said. Obito has changed: the way he stood, the sure way he walked, and his sole eye – red, so red, full of determination. You hear him or look at him and you would believe he could change this Earth.

* * *

Before Rin died, she was about to say something more. If she had mentioned the word 'Sanbi', it would have been enough for Kakashi to understand. Rin knew this, right before she died, when she could already taste blood rush up her throat and out of her mouth and failed to say it, and the last word she said was Kakashi's name instead. Rin knew she will leave something terrible, that this he will remember forever. And because of one word she didn't say –

Kakashi still wakes up every single night, jerking his hand from her heart, his mangekyo activating, involuntary. Kakashi cowers like a thirteen-year-old again and whispers _Rin forgive me please stop haunting me_. He turns on the light and grabs a book he has read so many times, only to find himself staring at the same page for an hour but all he can think of is Rin and Obito dying. There is always so much blood. And because of this –

(You can either live with ghosts, or let them destroy you, or invite it to your body for its possession and it will use you to destroy everything including yourself. A ghost needn't be a spirit or a ghoul, it can be a failed promise, a hallucination, the memory you can't forget even if you break your head.)

Obito, the martyr, the sacrifice, he will be the greatest of the three. He did make it true, his vow at thirteen, of crushing the shinobi. Though his purpose now was far more about protecting comrades or following rules. He was going to make a world where those do not exist. There will be nothing to protect yourself against when war wasn't even concept.

More than a decade later, the mask breaks and he looks straight at Kakashi, who is shocked at the sight of him alive. But Obito has changed, he stands and scowls as if he was expecting to be unmasked all along. The same pair of separated eyes look at each other again. He claims to be a nameless no one, a self-declared prophet and preacher of a gospel of despair, promising a new paradise where the dead will be raised again. He will lay waste upon the world, and lead the Last War to end history itself. He will make the world know the depths of misery, that after their utmost pain and suffering they will finally know true peace.

The sun will not rise again after the last full moon of this wasted world, but we will wake up in an everlasting dawn of a new Earth. We will be deathless.


End file.
